OCZ Vector 180 480GB Solid State Drive Review

OCZ has sent us their latest 2.5-inch solid state drive, the Vector 180. This new drive still uses the aging Barefoot 3 controller, but OCZ has teamed it with the latest Toshiba A19nm MLC NAND. This drive is all about reliability and features OCZ’s implementation of power loss protection, which they are calling Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+). PFM+ is not full power loss protection, but will protect data-at-rest. So PFM+ will protect data that has been already been written to the NAND. This helps protect the mapping table and reduces the risk of ‘bricking’ the drive. The 480GB version of the drive that we are reviewing today has sequential read and write speeds of 550 MB/s and 530 MB/s respectively. OCZ also backs this drive with their new ShieldPlus 5-year warranty. Let’s take a look!

Mushkin Expands Reactor SSD Line

Mushkin originally launched the Reactor solid state drive in a single capacity, 1TB. While 1TB is a lot of storage space, not everyone needs that much storage space, especially for an SSD so they are expanding the Reactor line to include two more capacities: 256GB and 512GB.

Patriot Announces Type-C USB Flash Drive

Patriot has just announced the development of a Type-C USB flash drive for the new Macbook, Google Chromebook Pixel and other Type-C equipped notebook and systems. It seems we will start seeing many Type-C devices come out this summer as USB Type-C connections start showing up on more devices.

Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB Solid State Drive Review

Kingston now has a full line of solid state drives to offer to consumers. We have already taken a look at their HyperX Predator PCI-Express solid state drive on the high end and they have their HyperX Fury, which is more entry level. Filling in the mid-range is the HyperX Savage, which effectively replaces the HyperX 3K solid state drive. The drive is powered by the Phison PS3110-S10 quad core, eight-channel controller that is the same controller that we saw on Corsair’s Neutron XT drive. The drive is also Kingston’s fastest SATA-based solid state drive with sequential read and write speeds of 560 MB/s and 530 MB/s respectively. Will this be the solid state drive to get in 2015? Read on as we find out!

Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB PCI-Express Solid State Drive Review

PCI-Express storage is nothing new, we have seen many different PCI-Express storage options over the past few years. The biggest advantage of using PCI-Express storage is that you overcome the typical 6.0Gb/s theoretical bandwidth limit of SATA-based solid state drives. If you have been following the storage industry you know that solid state drives have been bottlenecked by the SATA interface for years now. Well Kingston is presenting their first ever PCI-Express solid state drive. Part of their high-end HyperX brand the HyperX Predator boasts sequential read and write speeds of 1400 MB/s and 1000 MB/s respectively. That is some serious speed! While many PCI-Express storage devices we have reviewed in the past have featured a custom PCB with the drive on it Kingston has gone the M.2 route. So you can either buy the single M.2 device to use on an M.2 slot or you can buy it pre-installed in a PCI-Express adapter. We received the version with the adapter, let’s jump in!

480GB and 960GB Variants Added to Corsair Force LS Series

Corsair, a worldwide designer of high-performance components to the PC hardware market, today announced the release of the addition of 960GB and 480GB capacity models to the existing line of Force Series LS SSD drives. The new Force Series LS SSD models, like the previously announced 240GB, 120GB, and 60GB models, provide consumers a cost-effective way to upgrade their notebook or desktop PCs to faster, more reliable solid-state storage.

Crucial BX100 1TB Solid State Drive Review

Not that long ago we took a look at Crucial’s MX200 solid state drive, which is set to be their high-performance drive for 2015. They also sent us over their new BX100 solid state drive. This drive is their cost-effective solution that is aggressively priced and Crucial hopes it will get solid state drives in the hands of more people. How aggressively priced is it? Well the 1TB drive that we are taking a look at today is selling at my favorite online retailer for $374.99, which makes it only $0.37 per GB. The BX100 is powered by the Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller and features Micron 16nm synchronous MLC NAND. The 1TB version features sequential read and write speeds of 535 MB/s and 450 MB/s respectively. Let’s take a closer look…

Intel Releases Their SSD 750 Series

Intel today unveiled the Intel Solid-State Drive (SSD) 750 Series, its highest performing SSD for use in client PC storage devices and workstations. The 750 series delivers greater than four times the performance of SATA-based SSDs by utilizing four lanes of PCIe 3.0 and the NVM Express (NVMe) standard.

USB Type-C Storage Devices Coming Soon

With Apple’s brand new Macbook, the newest Chromebook and even some motherboards featuring the new USB Type-C connector there will be many different peripherals coming out that work with the connector. The first type of devices that we will be seeing are storage devices.